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Please don't ALT+F4 your life. And continue posting your message.

  Instead this country focuses on the color of skin and sexual orientation, while forgetting who truly is disadvantaged and who truly comes from NOTHING.

This needs to be said more frequently with that level of clarity, intersectional issues are co-opted by those who have to gain from artificial divisions. The inequalities are caused and perpetuated by the growing gaps between those who have and those who don't

Divide and conquer is the Oligarchs' favorite play. The American Left is all too willing to allow that play to be run successfully.

Thanks for the concern, and for anyone else I'm not serious about ALT+F4. However the more I think about the situation the more I fall into a pit of despair. And then we end up in a circle.

Have problems -> think about them -> depressed -> avoid thinking about it with drugs/alcohol/entertainment/etc. (not me, but I understand why anyone would) -> repeat

The only way to change your reality is to think about it. The only way to preserve your mental sanity is to not think about it.

Nothing is fair. I try to impart this lesson with my children everyday. They see it, viscerally, when they go visit their grandparents in Colombia. There are really poor people in this world who never had a chance. You have a chance and have learned an important lesson.

A new member of my crew immigrated here from Guatemala 6 years ago. He is now 24 and has learned English to the point where there is no accent. My wife has been a citizen for 18 years and still has a very strong accent. My Guate buddy took his opportunity by the horns and hasn't let go. He is amazing and has used the system(s) to the best of his ability.

He joined the USAF to get ahead and it has proved to be one of the best moves he made. He recently finished paramedic school paid for by the GI Bill. This is a story as old as time, and my grandfather did the same thing after swimming across the rio grande in 1934, except is was called the US Army Air Corps.

I say all that to say, you can lament your current station in life all you want. Just know that nothing will change if you sit in the corner all pissed off. The other option is to recognize that you are in control of how you respond to adversity. There are two options when one feels they have been slighted; 1. Get angry, stay angry, and pout. 2. Brush it off and have another go in a different way.

Some ideas that you may or may not like:

You can still join a military guard or reserve unit. That will unlock a LOT of benefits and you might actually like it. There are always government jobs that pay ok, but offer tuition reimbursement, pensions and other benefits in lieu of high pay. Apprenticeships with the trades (electrician, plumber, HVAC) can lead to making a LOT of money and owning your own business.

After all is said and done, there are more than one way to skin a cat. (I don't condone cat violence)

I do not wish to minimize your struggles and your pain. But it seems to me, someone not in your situation, that two things are true:

1. Much of your frustration is not with America, but with your family, and specifically your parents. It is your parents who fought, it is your parents who took in the stranger, it is your parents who beat you, it is your parents who expected that you would get a job and support everyone else so that they could have stability. (I am not an expert, but from what I understand, this is a typical expectation in families that come from third-world cultures.)

America isn't magic. Coming here doesn't automatically fix your family.

2. For all that you see that is unfair, or needing improvement, not coming here would have been worse. You make a decent income? You would not have in the village. Your parents fought over money every day? They would have in the village also. You grew up on nothing? You probably would have in the village also.

You sacrificed your own opportunity to give your siblings a better life. You're bitter about it. (I probably would be, too.) But it is also an honorable thing. It's honorable in third-world cultures; but I think it even gets some honor in America. (Some. There are also plenty who will mock you for being a sucker. I think they are wrong, but they are there.)

Whether honorable or not (I think it was), whether wise or not (perhaps not), you did what you did. It is now water under the bridge. What should you do now?

First, don't ALT+F4 life! Instead, what can you change?

Can you go to any of your siblings and say, "Look, I gave up my chance at college to give you stability; now I need you to help me with college"?

Even if not: Being in America, 30+, making a decent income but no degree... that isn't the worst starting position for the rest of your life. If you sit around and feel bitter, this may be as good as it will ever get. But if you look around, you can probably find some things that would 1) make for a better life for you when you're 35, and 2) be actually within your ability to reach. Start working toward those things.

You do not drive a car looking backwards. You did things in the past that, on reflection, you see as people taking advantage of you. You can't change that. But stop looking back at it and start moving forward from where you are.

So far this has been mostly about material things. But internally, I think you need to forgive your parents for their own brokenness, and their unreasonable expectations. You need to forgive yourself for letting yourself be taken advantage of. And you also need to stop looking for your own joy in material or financial success. America sells that dream, but it's empty. Things and money don't satisfy. Still try to improve your situation, but the American dream leaves you empty. Make friends that you enjoy spending time with. Find some activities that give you pleasure. I think God is there; find him. In those things you find real joy, real meaning. More money doesn't do it.

That's just how the world works. It's not fair, and it never was. You're simply told that it's fair because that's what the people on top need you to believe in order to keep society from crumbling.

America is in a dangerous position right now because they've let financial inequality grow too big - which, historically, precedes a sharp decline/collapse or a revolution (bloody as in civil war, or peaceful as in rebooting government). This is also why people are voting for crazies like Trump: He promises to fix things, and that's what people want to hear because they know it's all broken and no other politician will even admit there's a problem. Trump is of course toxic and will destroy everything, but that's beside the point because the people have lost hope and they need to hear something good for a change, even if it's an obvious lie. But I digress...

Yeah, you got shafted. But you're still young, and you can take that knowledge of the inherent unfairness and start making things work for you instead of staying in the box they've prepared for you. The people who get ahead know what rules to keep and what rules they can break. Learn from them.

This is nothing new. It's always the same story because in the beginning of an empire, it actually is true that things are (mostly) fair and you have every opportunity if you work hard. But over time it starts to decay, and eventually it becomes not true. Even George Orwell knew that ( https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Boxer_(Animal_Farm) ).

Take this as your first real life lesson (there will be many more).

The only other advice I can give is: The poor people work for their money. The rich people make their money work for them. How do you get enough money that it can start working for you? That's the trick - it's always changing. Right now the money is in luxury goods and subsistence goods (ultra rich goods and ultra poor goods) because the middle class has been hollowed out, so they're not buying middle class goods.

Yup.

Even those of us who grew up lower middle class in America have a lot of the same problems as the OP. Just a bit too rich to qualify for any subsidies, nowhere near rich enough to afford stability or be able to pay for things like a college tuition.

AFAIK it's been like that from day one, heck it might be better because at least nowadays we attempt to help somebody, just nobody like me. Things are slowly changing, and that's a good thing. I'd like to see people like me getting a little more help - it's good for them, good for business, good for the economy...it's "wins" all the way around. I don't want to be one of those people who begrudge those people from getting help because I didn't get any.

True, I would argue that the Baby Boom generation uniquely distorted this through sheer numbers. As a result, the US system has been tailored to them during all stages of their life. Often at the expense of others.

This is entirely off–topic for HN, but whatever. America has equality of access, not equality of outcomes.

I’ll tell you a similar story. I’ll have to simplify and leave out some details, as you’ll see. My ancestors immigrated to America too. They too had nothing but the clothes on their backs. They did have one tiny advantage: America was giving away free land. So when they arrived in the 1700s, they got a homestead. Of course, there was no infrastructure. No running water, no roads, no electricity. They built a cabin and plowed a field and lived in poverty for their entire lives. Their children helped out on the farm from a young age, and occasionally attended school when it was available. They soon got itchy feet and wanted to move away from crowded areas. One of them took his wife and joined an expedition that headed west over the Appalachian Mountains, then sailed down the Cumberland River. Most of the group stopped and founded a little town called Nashville, TN, but my ancestor and a few others thought that the area was far too crowded so they kept going. At the fork of the Red River they turned north and sailed up river. Eventually they found a nice spots and started building cabins. Later the town of Adams, TN was founded there. When they built that cabin their nearest neighbor was building their own cabin 20 miles away. They lived there in poverty for their entire lives. They helped raise the first church, and helped pay a teacher to run a school. They worked constantly to improve life for their children. It was four or five generations before my family achieved what you and I would call stability.

Ok, so you didn’t have the advantage of free land, nor the back breaking labor of clearing it and farming it. But you had the advantage that someone else had already built the infrastructure we rely so heavily on. As a result, you yourself achieved what it took my family five generations to do. Like you, I didn’t qualify for financial aid or scholarships. I had nobody to help me pay for car insurance, or to lend me money. Nothing but whatever I could earn for myself. I went to college for one year, failed most of my classes (basically almost everything except Calculus), dropped out, and went into software engineering. Of course I have been annoyed to find myself applying for jobs only to be told that they only hire people with degrees, but it hasn’t ruined my life.

> Instead this country focuses on the color of skin and sexual orientation…

This is a very new phenomena, and in fact it is really only a very vocal minority who do so. Unfortunately for us normal people, it is a minority who universally went to college and now dominate a particular political party. 80 or 90% of the country have no care for what color your skin is. All they care about is how hard you work. Your boss at whatever job you pick is going to care more about your work ethic than almost anything else. If you start a business of your own, you will care more about your employees’ work ethic than almost anything else :)

I recommend that you take the long view. Find a stable job, marry, start a family, raise some children well, and make sure that they do better in life than you. Forget about anything you have seen on TV; that’s the real American Dream. And don't forget that you’ve already helped your siblings have a better life than you. Take some satisfaction from that, and teach your children to find the same satisfaction where they can.

Ask HN: How Is America Fair?